IN THE LOOP

I know what you’re thinking: I only picked this movie so I could run this ridiculous picture of James Gandolfini in his Crazy General outfit. Well, perhaps you’re right. The film itself is a political farce described thusly: “Wickedly sardonic and filled with secrets, lies, leaks, plugs, and faulty intelligence and walls, In the Loop leads us behind closed doors to reveal bungling bureaucrats entangled in petty rivalries, obsequious aides jockeying for favor, and the Keystone Cops of government, including a minister who hopes there’s no war because it’s bad enough coping with the Olympics, and an unscrupulous bureaucrat who doctors intelligence because he believes that “in the land of truth, the man with one fact is king.” Director Armando Iannucci is a veteran of British comedy TV, including I’m Alan Partridge and the short-lived but no doubt beloved Time Trumpet.

MANURE



The Polish Brothers are back and they’ve got poop on their minds! The men behind such uncategorizables as Northfork and Twin Falls Idaho return with “scene after scene of wonderfully rendered, pure cinematic imagination.” Tea Leoni is the heir to to Rose’s Manure Company and Kyle Maclachlan finally has the role he was born to play – “a ruthless, slick-talking fertilizer rep.” OK, so maybe Agent Dale Cooper was the role he was born to play. But Billy Bob Thornton as a manure salesman? Sold!

MARY AND MAX

The opening night film (that’s tomorrow night, people, so start lining up) is an Australian claymation tale “of a 20-year pen-pal friendship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horowitz, a 44-year-old Jewish man, who is severely obese, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, and lives an isolated life in New York City.” If you guessed that Philip Seymour Hoffman voices the latter, you win a door prize. Toni Collette is the 8-year-old, no doubt a warm-up for her upcoming multiple personality role(s) on Showtime’s United States of Tara.

WHITE LIGHTNIN’



Not a remake of the Burt Reynolds hixploitation classic, but nonetheless a remake of sorts: White Lightnin’ is a fictional take on the real-life subject of the documentary Dancing Outlaw, Jesco White. “At the tender age of six, he started getting high by huffing gasoline and stolen lighter fluid. Growing up, Jesco often found himself shuffling between reform schools, work camps, and his home in West Virginia—until his father, famous mountain dancer D. Ray White, taught him how to tap. After his father's murder, Jesco begins to dance to control his increasingly wicked ways.” Crazy casting note: Carrie Fisher co-stars as Cilla, the love of Jesco’s life.

WORLD’S GREATEST DAD

I can hardly believe I’m including a movie starring Robin Williams among my picks, but writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait, maker of the greatest alcoholic clown movie and the greatest dog-blowing movie ever made, has a knack for the perversely comic. Presumably that holds true for World’s Greatest Dad, but the Sundance guide description is so vague as to only tantalize: Williams plays a high school poetry teacher who “suddenly faces both the worst tragedy of his life, and the greatest opportunity. Determined to make lemonade from life’s lemons, Lance treads a path that could land him everything he’s ever dreamed of, as long as he can live with the knowledge of how he got there.”

Part One